Where else is there to go?

This site is a great mix of shitposting, news and general events analysis, and serious history and theory effortposting. If you’re a leftist, where else is there on the internet that’s like this?

Without this place at best my connection to the left at all would be like a Monthly Review subscription, a Jacobin subscription, slowly working my way through marxists.org, and maybe occasionally reading whatever new releases from Verso looked interesting.

unironic make-Main-the-only-comm posters but specifically for this site’s various megathreads is very funny to me.

I hope Russiagate just fires back up in full-swing.

Oh, wow, I haven’t visited r/politics in so many years. This is something else. A real blast of nostalgia.

Seeing these awful, smug people so lost and confused and angry almost makes me feel good. They have no idea what’s going on.

That’s hilarious. Has there ever been a more incompetent politician?

It would be so easy to win a national election against Trump. Watch. “I, your democratic candidate, pledge to fight the supermarket, pharmacological, and healthcare cartels that are artificially inflating consumer prices for their own gain.”

But democrats don’t want to do that.

Thanks!

Was worried for a moment that this post was going to be about Gaben (who I rent all my games from) revealing a hard right shift. Like Gaben really obviously doing a 2018-era Musk slide to the right. “You don’t gotta hand it to them, but some Republicans are alright. Also, I love MAGA and Gordon Freeman would’ve marched at Charlottesville and Chell would’ve defended freedom on Jan 6.”

Every screenshot I see from Bluesky is posters writing in this exact same cadence/style. Unreconstructed cringe posters from 2009. It would be almost incredible if I didn’t find them all so loathsome.

Philippi talked about operational security, including the need for disguises, the use of leather gloves (because latex and nitrile gloves can transfer fingerprints), wearing shoes that are too big, the need to burn their clothes after the attack, and not bringing smartphones on the night of the attack.

On Nov. 2, 2024, Philippi participated in a Nordic ritual, which included reciting a Nordic prayer and discussing the Norse god Odin. Philippi told the UCEs that “this is where the New Age begins” and that it was “time to do something big” that would be remembered “in the annals of history.”

Imagining this guy wearing Groucho Marx glasses with clown shoes, leather gloves on his hands, while reenacting the bear warrior ritual scene from The Northman.

I was searching Youtube for an art movie from 2009 that I was hoping someone had illegally uploaded there, the autofiction/documentary film Perestroika by Sarah Turner, because the only way I can find to watch it is by buying a booklet from a Lonon-based art museum that includes a DVD of the film. It’s only £7, which is $9. But they have a £28 international shipping fee. I’m broke so $45 is way too much money for me to spend on a 115 minute long art film I’ve never seen before. And then the DVD will probably have regioning issues that would be a pain to sort out.

So anyway, I type “Perestroika 2009 sarah turner” into Youtube and the first result is a playlist titled “sex” with 167 videos, the first of which is a Mexican film from the '70s called EL TIGRE DE SANTA JULIA. The next result is another playlist titled “a film” with 23 foreign films, one of which is by Paolo Passolini. And the third result is a video titled “Brie Larson Braless No Bra” uploaded by a channel named “Celebrities Braless.”

Disappointed but persevering I modified my search to “Perestroika sarah turner.” The first result was an interview with Sarah Turner. Still disappointing, but we’re moving in the right direction. The second result was “Brie Larson Braless No Bra” by the same channel as before.

It’s just weird. For one thing I don’t watch erotic content on YouTube, it rarely serves these sorts of results up for me. The only time I see this stuff is when I get my once yearly urge to watch bushcrafting videos which always gives me videos that have a thumbnail of a naked woman in the woods with titles like “How I stay warm in Siberia,” mixed in with the normal videos. For another, from what I can see Perestroika is not an erotic film. And based on her website it seems like Sarah Turner’s work doesn’t deal with eroticism at all. I can only guess that the word perestroika is throwing off YouTube’s algorithm, giving me the sort of results it might serve to a non-english speaking user?

I hate this guy so much. Made a few admittedly pretty good movies in the '90s, but the rest of his films are terrible, and he’s been lauded as some sort of Film God ever since. I mean, I’ll always watch a new Tarantino movie because I know it’ll be decently fun to watch (and be mad at) and all his films are technically very well made and typically are full of good actors giving entertaining performances (of weak material). So I guess credits due where credits due.

But his post-'90s work all feels so self-indulgent, so masturbatory. Clearly Quentin Tarantino also believes himself to be a genius, with very important ideas on film. Any time I hear this guy say anything he comes off as so smug and self-congratulatory and you can feel that attitude throughout every moment of his work. Add on the racism and zionism and he’s just a vile man who I wish would go away.

But I can see where he’d get this read about Joker 2. It’s certainly the way chuds took it. Don’t think I agree, though. I feel like if anything this movie was like “all you dumbasses intentionally misconstrued the first movie as some sort of ode to toxic masculinity, so I’ll make the same point as last time but more clearly.”

This is neither here nor there, but I somehow listened to this review podcast thing of Joker 2, I think it ended up on my twitter feed or something, and it was just three libs who didn’t like the movie, but I got the feeling they didn’t like it because the character of Joker was seized by chuds as an icon and they couldn’t articulate that. Anyway, one of their only cogent reasons for hating the movie was “Lady Gaga’s Harley gets used and tossed aside by a narcissist.” And I just wanted to ask them if they saw the same movie I did. How did they want it to end? With Arthur taking up Harley’s offer to full personify the Joker and live out the rest of his life as some kind of blood-crazed monster?

They also complained that the musical numbers didn’t blow them away. Which I guess is fair, but I also feel like that’s not totally engaging with the movie on its terms. The musical numbers are the hallucinations of a deranged spree murderer who can only sometimes tell fantasy from reality. Complaining that they aren’t incredible is a bit like complaining that Arthur’s stand-up in Joker wasn’t funny. But, I don’t know, maybe I’m giving the movie too much credit there.

To all social reformers this poster, who is held in good standing except for those times badposts were made, doth say this: I am a loyal subject of the Good King Gaben, most venerable and wise and just, whose reign shall be eternal. No darkness can enter into these bountiful lands so long as those who hold fast to the King remain faithful.

:imagine-dragons:

this is just a repeat of “We can push Biden to the left”. What good did that do?

What do you mean? That worked. I mean, sure, I’ll grant you that Biden didn’t make any sort of push to bring about policies that help working class people, but he did pose on that UAW picket line. That’s the most progressive thing an American president has done since FDR. That’s progress, and like any progress it’s slow. Gradual. I expect that, at this rate, in forty years we might get a president that will be willing to say out loud that it ought to be illegal to extrajudicially kill homeless people.

All the digital movies I own are ones I purchased on blu-ray that came with a digital code. I’d do it that way with all media if I could. But the sheer convenience of digital is undeniable.

edit: though, to be clear, I do think pirating is good and completely victimless in the vast majority of cases.

I spoke to a conservative family member the other day who said they didn’t like Walz because “he’s a total socialist.” I know words like socialist don’t have much meaning to most Americans, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?

I asked that, in nicer terms, but didn’t get a meaningful response. I called Walz a moderate, and said that he hasn’t even called for any New Deal style programs to be added to the democratic platform, much less socialism.

Think they made Walz turn down his rhetoric because they want to run a center-right campaign to attract would-be Republican voters that are put off by Trump? If that’s right it’s got to be one of the worst electoral strategies, maybe ever.

I’m not plugged into popular culture, especially around music. I don’t follow any contemporary artists, and I only know the names of a small handful of the biggest artists. Not for any conceited reason, I’m just weird when it comes to music. I mostly like movie soundtracks, I don’t know why. And some Post-Rock stuff. But sometimes I randomly hear a real song and enjoy it.

All this to say I really like her song “Girl, So Confusing.” Which I only know about because of this edit of the movie Amadeus using the song (after the style of this edit of the movie Barry Lyndon using the song “a lot” by 21 Savage). I only know who Charli is because of the whole Brat thing, and until I saw this edit I don’t think I’d ever heard any of her music before.

Though I hate the only other song of hers I’ve ever heard, “Girl, So Confusing” ft. Lorde. Which is a little funny because one of the only albums of contemporary music that I own is Pure Heroin by Lorde.

I fucking go to open up my iTunes program on my fucking Windows PC because I wanted to watch a movie I own digitally, and I get a fucking message alerting me that iTunes for PC has split into three programs. Old iTunes now only has audiobooks and podcasts. Apple music is self-explanatory. And then there’s Apple TV+ for the rest.

Goddamn that’s irritating. And on the one hand, sure, iTunes for PC has always been a very poorly made program and it’s clear to me that they intentionally designed it to be as slow as possible because why would they release a functional program for their main competitor’s OS. So I guess, assuming the new programs work better than the old one that’s some improvement. But why’s it gotta be three separate things? Why can’t it be one centralized thing? Hey Tim Cook, if you’re inexplicably reading this, even though this decision was probably made far beneath your desk, fuck you. Also fuck Microsoft because it’s probably their fault too. And fuck me.

I just assumed, I think based on some clip I saw of them years ago, that they were a stoner couple who got high and giggled nonsense into a mic for two hours as a podcast. Bizarre to learn that the guy hosted a different podcast with Hasan and the lady was an IDF soldier (I think I heard that somewhere?).

I mean so many Internet personalities are political non-entities, who’ve based their entire personality around like video games or weed or Disneyland, so I’m always surprised to learn when one of them turns out to have any political opinions at all.